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What is LingHacks VII?
What is LingHacks VII?
LingHacks VII was the seventh iteration of the world's first computational linguistics hackathon for high schoolers. Our goal was to expose students of all backgrounds to the field of natural language processing and inspire students to pursue computer science in their careers. LingHacks VII was an invention competition where you came together with a team and build a software project that integrates computational linguistics and may or may not solve a scientific or social problem. LingHacks is a member of the Obama White House's CSforALL National Consortium and is the inaugural recipient of the AI4ALL Impact Grant.
Why computational linguistics?
Why computational linguistics?
Computational linguistics bridges the gap between simple rule-following computers and complex humans who can comprehend emotion and interpret ambiguity, which gives computers more humanistic abilities. Comp ling techniques also power tools used in biology, fintech, IT, and more. Computational linguistics intrigues people across a broad spectrum of artistic and technical interests.
What is computational linguistics?
What is computational linguistics?
Computational linguistics, otherwise known as natural language processing, is the field of artificial intelligence that applies to the synthesis and analysis of language and speech. Things like machine translation technologies, voice assistants, search engines, and chatbots are all powered by computational linguistics tools. It's a fascinating synergy of scientific techniques applied to an elegant humanity that is part and parcel of our core human identities.
What is a hackathon?
What is a hackathon?
A hackathon is an invention competition and educational experience. Check out this video by MLH for an inside look at what happens at a hackathon!
When, where, and how much?
When, where, and how much?
In light of COVID-19 concerns, LingHacks VII was completely virtual (and free, as always) and took place from June 13-14, 2026, with educational workshops also running from June 8-12.
Schedule
Schedule
All Times in US Pacific Time
Friday, June 12
9am: "Good Vodka, Lousy Meat: Machine Translation of Poetry" with Dimitrije Golubović (Димитрије Голубовић)
Saturday, June 13
9am: opening ceremony, followed by icebreaker
10am: hacking begins
11am: "Introduction to Python Programming" with Karina Halevy
12pm: "Building Your First End-To-End Machine Learning Pipeline" with Vedangi Mukadam
1:30pm: "Introduction to Version Control with GitHub" with Anay Paraswani
5pm: "Introduction to Large Language Models" with Karina Halevy
10pm: "Is AI Smarter Than a Roundworm? The Art of Learning with Fewer Neurons" with Sarthak Bisht
Sunday, June 14
12pm: project submissions due
2pm: College/Career Panel
Monday, June 15
~1pm: winners announced via Devpost
Alumni Success
Alumni Success
Past LingHacks prize winners have gone on to attend undergraduate institutions like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, CMU, UPenn, Georgia Tech, University of Maryland College Park, UCLA, and UC Berkeley, to work in technical roles at OpenAI, ServiceNow, AWS, PayPal, Box, New York Times, Bloomberg, Etsy, AMD, Apple, Microsoft, Coinbase, DRW, Tesla, Stripe, Infosys, Oracle, Cisco, Databricks, Google, Meta, Waymo, HP, Roblox, Pfizer, and SpaceX, and to found several startups and become Neo Scholar finalists.
This could be you! Register now.
Photos from LingHacks II (2019)
Photos from LingHacks II (2019)
A huge thank-you goes out to all of our sponsors, partners, mentors, volunteers, and judges for making LingHacks II possible. Check out the photos below for a peek at our second annual hackathon and get excited about LingHacks VII!
College & Career Panelists
College & Career Panelists
Karina Halevy (she/her)
Karina Halevy (she/her)
Karina is a PhD student in Language and Information Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. She holds a joint bachelor's degree in Computer Science and History with a minor in Statistics from Harvard University. She has worked in technical research roles at Google, Comcast, Apple, EPFL, Raytheon BBN, Harvard, and Affectiva as well as software engineering internship roles at Tableau (Salesforce), Microsoft, and Bloomberg. Her favorite activity is teaching - she has [head] TA'ed functional programming, discrete math, AI/ML, and natural language processing courses through Harvard, the University of Virginia, Wave Learning Festival, and ProjectCSGIRLS and developed 30+ workshops over the past 9 years for LingHacks.
Sarthak Bisht
Sarthak Bisht
Sarthak Bisht is a PhD student in Language and Information Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. He also holds a Master's in Language Technology (Carnegie Mellon) and Master's (Carnegie Mellon) and Bachelor's (BITS Pilani) degrees in MechE. He co-founded FPrime AI, an AI consultancy that works with Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Intuitive Surgical and D.E. Shaw as well as deep-tech startups, delivering high-risk AI research and custom AI solutions. Sarthak also mentors and invests in social ventures that harness technology, training and financial instruments to create entrepreneurship and employment opportunities at the base of the economic pyramid.
Johanne Antoine
Johanne Antoine
Johanne is a recent graduate from Tufts University with a major in computer science. She is currently working on her father's website, Haiti-Reference. Her hobbies include art, gaming and music.
Vedangi Mukadam (she/her)
Vedangi Mukadam (she/her)
Vedangi Mukadam is a backend software engineer with experience at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, where she most recently worked on the AWS EC2 VPC team. Her interests include distributed systems, backend engineering, and mentoring students through mock interviews and technical guidance. She is also currently pursuing OMSCS coursework and enjoys helping beginners bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and practical software engineering.
Rithvik Senthil
Rithvik Senthil
Born in Phoenix, Rithvik spent a lot of time growing up in Chennai, India. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon recently with a Masters in Computational Data Science. He loves anything AI but his interests generally lie in NLP for Social Good and Multimodal Representation. He works at Blue Origin where he not only gets to indulge his love for NLP but also quench his childhood passion for space exploration by building agentic systems that support rockets!
Bradley Warren
Bradley Warren
Bradley Warren is an Army officer and founding member of the US Army’s Artificial Intelligence Scholars program. He lead the Army Natural Language Processing team as part of the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Integration Center. Brad is currently attending Carnegie Mellon University where he is getting his PhD in Language Technology under Dr. Bhiksha Raj.
Workshop Instructors
Workshop Instructors
Karina Halevy
Karina Halevy
Karina is a PhD student in Language and Information Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. She holds a joint bachelor's degree in Computer Science and History with a minor in Statistics from Harvard University. She has worked in technical research roles at Google, Comcast, Apple, EPFL, Raytheon BBN, Harvard, and Affectiva as well as software engineering internship roles at Tableau (Salesforce), Microsoft, and Bloomberg. Her favorite activity is teaching - she has [head] TA'ed functional programming, discrete math, AI/ML, and natural language processing courses through Harvard, the University of Virginia, Wave Learning Festival, and ProjectCSGIRLS and developed 30+ workshops over the past 9 years for LingHacks.
Sarthak Bisht
Sarthak Bisht
Sarthak Bisht is a PhD student in Language and Information Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. He also holds a Master's in Language Technology (Carnegie Mellon) and Master's (Carnegie Mellon) and Bachelor's (BITS Pilani) degrees in MechE. He co-founded FPrime AI, an AI consultancy that works with Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Intuitive Surgical and D.E. Shaw as well as deep-tech startups, delivering high-risk AI research and custom AI solutions. Sarthak also mentors and invests in social ventures that harness technology, training and financial instruments to create entrepreneurship and employment opportunities at the base of the economic pyramid.
Vedangi Mukadam
Vedangi Mukadam
Vedangi Mukadam is a backend software engineer with experience at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, where she most recently worked on the AWS EC2 VPC team. Her interests include distributed systems, backend engineering, and mentoring students through mock interviews and technical guidance. She is also currently pursuing OMSCS coursework and enjoys helping beginners bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and practical software engineering.
Dimitrije Golubović (Димитрије Голубовић)
Dimitrije Golubović (Димитрије Голубовић)
Writer, translator, and student of philosophy at KU Leuven. Gold medalist at the International Philosophy Olympiad in 2023. Passionate about philosophy and its many intersections, such as: language, literature, and the sciences.
A huge thank you also goes out to our mentors: Sarthak Bisht, Tammy Lily Sisodiya, Pradnya Jangid, Edmund Eric Gah, and Harshprabha.
Sponsors
Sponsors
Community Partners
Community Partners
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